Seatguru.Com - For Airline Travelers

by ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

If you travel a lot, but don't often take the same trip on the same airline you might never figure out what's a good seat or a bad seat. Nowadays, most lines let you change your seat assignment online or at a kiosk in the airport. But which seats are good and which are bummers?

What's worse, is that the seat I might like might not suit you. Legroom is not a problem for me (I can duck under mushrooms when it rains), but I need stowage for a bag of expensive electronics and cameras that I dare not check. Likewise, if you're 6' 4" you aren't going to be putting a gear bag under the seat in front of you -- you'll be lucky if your feet fit. ("I'm sorry, sir, your feet have to fit completely under the seat in front of you, or in the overhead compartment. But I would be glad to check them for you....") Well, I can laugh at that because I'm not 6'4".

So I was glad when a friend tipped me to SeatGuru.com. For most domestic airlines, and a few internationals, SeatGuru gives you a map of the plane's seats with a color coding as to what the best, and the worst, seats in the house are. Pay particular attention to yellow- or yellow-and-green coded seats, as there are details there that are likely to be a deal breaker for some passengers and a deal maker for others.

Which seats let you stretch out? Where is there a laptop power plug? Can you see the in-flight movie, if any? Are you near the bassinet (a key question for those traveling with babies, and trying to travel without)? SeatGuru.com as a lot of the answers.

When more information about a particular seat is needed, simply mousing over the seat gives you whatever info SeatGuru has. It's a good use of JavaScript to convey information -- for a change. In fact the whole site is a good idea: a kind of decentralized (it works on reader input) reputation manager for airline seats. Sweet. It's not perfect (Southwest is one of the airline omissions) but it sure beats what the airline tells you: "window" or "aisle."

We're not getting a dime from this guy, we just think he has a clever idea; we'll use it, why keep it to ourselves?

FMI: www.seatguru.com